2008 has seen the most progress to our garden yet! Lorrie has planted over 300 plants and flowers. We installed a drip irrigation system. I vacationed in Arizona and New Mexico in May, and came back with a lot of pictures of buildings that we want to construct, and 631 pounds of rocks/sand for the garden. Our Canyon Diablo bridge was finished and installed and it looks outstanding.

Click on each thumbnail to see an larger image.

The catus garden has filled in nicely where the old Silver Maple was. Only 2 catus didn't make it through the winter.

We added a third stream including 2 waterfalls. I finished this in two 14 hour days.

And this is the finished product.

We had our first ever open house in late July. It was attended by approximately 125 people. I ran two trains continously for 5.5 hours with no issues. The garden was well received and the visitors were very interested in viewing a "garden under construction" as most gardens that have open houses are 100% complete.

As mentioned in previous year's photos, I wanted to have a scale model of the Canyon Diablo bridge. I went to Arizona, measured and photgraphed the bridge and drew it up in CAD. A welding shop used the drawing to first cut out a template of the side of the bridge, shown here. He used the template to weld up the framing.

This is the real Canyon Diablo bridge in Arizona, approximately 35 miles East of Flaggstaff.

The welder gave me another copy of the template that I used to enlarge my canyon in order for the bridge to fit. I needed to widen the area by approx. 12", and deepen it by 4".

And this is the finished bridge in place. Most of the light colored rock under the bridge came from the actual canyon that the real bridge spans in northern Arizona. I made forms and poured custom sized/shaped concrete abutments for support.

Another shot of bridge with a meet on it.

Since we had planned on having irrigation from the very begining, it was not very hard to install the water lines, valves, and wiring.

The Super Chief at the West end of the garden.

A view from the roof. I try ro take one of these shots every year, just to compare our progress from previous years.

Our pond at sunset, with our Koi wondering what I am doing laying down on the rocks with a camera. They thought they were going to be fed!